


Echoes

by tridecaphilia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:30:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tridecaphilia/pseuds/tridecaphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Echo Will Graham has no interest in having a Grounder. He's spent his entire life in control of his abilities and he has no intention of changing that. Hannibal has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hobbs

**Author's Note:**

> For the first few chapters, this will be an episode-by-episode rewrite. There are changes to the canon, and I've eliminated most of the dialogue that stays the same. I expect by episode four we'll be spinning off into uncharted territory.
> 
> Definitions at the end of the chapter.

Crime scenes are supposed to be traumatic. They’re supposed to push Echoes to the limit. The massive overuse of Echoes to solve crimes has led to hundreds of them being sent back to the Chambers.

Will Graham, FBI Echo, knows all this. But for the years he’s been in Jack’s custody, he’s been the exception to the rule. His ability to read the “scars” of a crime scene has kept him out of the Chambers just as effectively as it forced so many of his fellows back into them.

He teaches in the FBI Academy at Jack’s request, despite knowing that there’s very little he can teach headblind recruits—and they’re all headblind, Echoes have long been sorted into Chambers by the time they’re old enough to be FBI prospies. His abilities are inborn more than they are honed, and it’s not really possible for him to teach someone who’s headblind how to see the scars and hear the screams he does.

Jack comes to see him teach sometimes, but this time is different. Will doesn’t need his ability to know that.

“May I?” Jack asks. Will considers objecting but Jack doesn’t need permission, not really. So he holds very still while Jack adjusts his glasses for him, looking away the whole time. He loathes eye contact. Windows to the soul indeed.

It’s been a long time since Jack requested him on a case. Will had started to hope that after the incident last time, he’d never try it again. But the way Jack grabs his bag when Will moves to leave tells him that he was right the first time, when Jack first arrived. He’s here about a case. Will is sure he isn’t going to like it.

He’s right.

“Eight girls abducted from eight different Minnesota campuses in the last eight months,” Jack explains. He fills Will in on all the details as they head to the case room. Will can work with a picture, but he can’t work with the descriptions of someone who wasn’t involved.

It’s been a long time since Will was disgusted by a crime scene, or by scars at all. But these girls—he has a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knows what that means—he knows what’s happened to these girls.

So he fights not to be put on the case. He walks out, or tries to. “You have Heimlich at Harvard and Bloom at Georgetown,” he reminds Jack. “They do the same thing I do.”

“But not as well,” Jack says, voice even. “Because they’re headblind. Bloom is low-level empathic, but she’s not an Echo. Heimlich has an Echo on staff but not one as adjusted as you. You’re the only one I trust to handle these kinds of cases.”

Will knows Jack. He knows that that word, _trust_ , was thrown in just to make him cooperate. Jack knows that Will craves trust. He wants more than anything to be treated like a human being and not a tool.

But Will knows Jack. And he knows that to Jack, he will always be a tool first and a human in a distant second.

“I’m not the only Echo out there who can handle these things, Jack,” Will tries to say.

Finally, though, he realizes it’s no use.

Parents are the worst part of this job, as far as Will is concerned. The parents are always the last to know something’s wrong with their child, and the first to blame everyone but themselves. These parents act different. But they still insist that Elise could be fine, when Will can “smell” the death all over the house. Even the pictures of Elise have lost the light from her eyes, to his vision.

He doesn’t wear an Echo ID bracelet, and hasn’t since he was legally declared reintegrated several years ago. So the parents, thankfully, don’t know that there’s an Echo working on this case. They don’t need to know that.

The cat ignores him. It’s some sense that animals have—they tend not to recognize Echoes as a separate entity. As far as the cat is concerned, Will really is just an echo.

He falls into the trance that most Echoes can’t afford to fall into, pulling at the scars in the room until he finds the murder. He’s shaken out of his trance by a young agent talking to him.

To him.

No one should be talking to him right now. It's taboo. While an Echo is working, they aren't really _there._ But of course, this person doesn't know he's an Echo.

He can barely think. This is one of the biggest dangers of a trance. Some Echoes can’t pull themselves out of one; others, like him, can’t afford to be pulled out by anyone else. It takes the maximum dose of aspirin to get him functional again.

Jack wants him to stay. Will has no desire to stay in this state, in this room, anywhere near this killer any longer. He can’t explain to Jack that he’s not fully out of his trance because his junior agent shook him out of it too soon. Jack would insist he get a Grounder—or just send him back to the Chamber. Either option would be torture for Will.

On the way home he finds Winston. Dogs, like cats, ignore Echoes. He knew going in that this particular dog wouldn’t respond to him. But what it does respond to are treats, and a bath, and being surrounded by other dogs. Dogs who have learned, from the way their scents sink into Will, that he’s part of their pack. He’s their alpha, so to speak. They respect him. They, unlike every other living being he’s ever encountered, treat him like he belongs.

Sleep comes easy when he’s surrounded by dogs. Much easier than it would have come if he’d been back in Minnesota. But even that can’t keep away the nightmares, of Elise, of this case.

Jack doesn’t know about the nightmares. Will has no intention of ever telling him. As far as Jack is concerned, Will is the only Echo to remain stable after over fifteen years on the outside, let alone without a Grounder.

Part of him wants to drown himself in the sink, the next day in Quantico. It would stop the nightmares, it would stop the pressure and the pain. The one thing that stops him isn’t that Jack needs him, or that there’s a case to solve. It’s a memory of one person. A girl, an Echo, like a sister to him in the Chamber, who had been recalled less than a month before her requisite ten years to reintegration would have been complete.

Don’t forget me, she’d said. Live enough for both of us, she’d said.

So he wouldn’t, and he would.

“Do you respect my judgment, Will?” Jack asks. Will considers laughing, because it doesn’t and never has mattered if he respects Jack’s judgment or anything else about him. He’s bound to Jack. Legally, no matter how old he gets he always needs a guardian, and Jack is his.

“Yes,” he says instead.

“Good,” Jack says. “Because we will stand a better chance of catching this guy with you in the saddle.”

“I’m in the saddle,” Will says. “Just… confused which direction I’m pointing.”

It’s a lie. Sort of. He’s in the saddle, he’s ready to go, because he has to be. But he’s shaken. Far more than he should be.

When Jack had become his guardian, it had been because he needed an Echo and Will has always been far and away the most functional of his peers. They’d had a long talk, set down certain ground rules. But seeing as all of those rules have been broken in the past day and a half, and continue to be broken now with Jack looming over Will, it doesn’t seem relevant. And that shakes Will—the little trust and security he’d formed for himself is faltering.

Will tries to explain, tries to explain how he knows and what he knows. He catches himself only when he’s an inch away from saying that the man kills them _with mercy._ That’s the killer’s thoughts. Not appropriate for Will Graham, not appropriate for a publicly stable Echo. He rephrases.

There’s silence for a long moment. “Sensitive psychopath,” Jack says, softer than before.

They agree—Jack agrees with Will’s thinking, more like—that the next victim will be taken soon.

Will doesn’t know that Jack goes to talk to Alana afterward. He doesn’t know that Alana asks for a promise, and he doesn’t know that Jack lies when he makes it. He doesn’t know that Jack is looking for a Grounder for him. And he doesn’t know that Alana suggests one.

Will is busy in the morgue, falling into an involuntary trance for the first time in years. He maintains his connection to the real world just enough, though. He manages to explain what happened, how the stab wounds and antler velvet got there. And then he realizes something else—

“There’s something wrong with the meat,” he says. The sick feeling in his stomach hasn’t gone away. Every time he looks at even a picture of one of the abducted girls it gets worse. And that—that means there’s some connection to the stomach in this case. This killer—he’s eating the girls.

The doctors look at him in astonishment. There’s a tumor in her liver, as it turns out. Will doesn’t want to explain how he knew. He doesn’t want to be grilled about his Echo abilities. So he leaves, trying to pull himself into the walls of the buildings around him—safe and solid—until the sick feeling goes away and he’s fully back on this planet.

Alana finds him in the lecture hall preparing for the next class. “I didn’t think you’d still be here,” she says. “I thought you’d be taking a break from teaching until you were done with this case.”

Will shakes his head without looking up from his notes and slides. “Teaching is easier,” he says. He doesn’t explain further, but he’s sure Alana gets it.

“Has Jack told you?”

The shudder that races up his spine tells him what she hadn’t. He looks up. “He’s getting me a Grounder.”

“A therapist,” Alana corrects him.

Will’s expression doesn’t waver. Alana sighs. “Dr. Lecter is a Grounder and an old colleague of mine. He’s always been a therapist first and a Grounder second. You’ll be fine. It’s why I recommended him to Jack.”

That news shakes Will. He reels back, nearly hitting the blackboard before he catches himself. “You recommended me a Grounder?” His voice comes out choked, shaking with betrayal.

“A therapist,” Alana says again. “Believe me, Will, I wouldn’t force a Grounder on you, but I’m worried about you. And if a therapist is the most help you’ll take, then I want you to have it.”

In Baltimore, Jack talks to Hannibal about a certain Echo. They discuss Hannibal’s extensive but largely untested Grounding abilities and the growing possibility that Will Graham might be in need of those abilities. And in the end, Hannibal agrees to see Will. As a patient only, he stresses. Forcing Grounding on an Echo is a cruel thing.

Jack agrees, although he doesn’t really understand.

Even if Alana hadn’t forewarned him, Will would have known as soon as Jack brought Dr. Lecter in that the man is a Grounder. He also knows, because not only Alana but Jack as well told him as much, that he’s a therapist as well. He’d like to think Jack’s purpose in introducing the two men has more to do with the second skill than the first; but he knows Jack, and knows that if he ever decides Will needs a Grounder he will duct-tape their hands together until Will lets it happen.

Jack explains to Dr. Lecter about how the picture of Elise Nichols had spread. When he mentions Freddie Lounds, Will gets a strange twinge in the back of his mind. He always gets that twinge when he hears the name—like he heard it once before but forgot where. But that’s impossible; his memory is perfect. “Tasteless,” is all he says.

“Do you have problems with taste?” Dr. Lecter asks.

“My thoughts are often not tasty,” Will replies. The way the words flow seems so natural that he doesn’t recognize where the connections come from.

“Nor mine,” Dr. Lecter admits. “Nor effective barriers.”

“That tends to come with the territory,” Will says. It’s not what he means to say. He didn’t want Jack to find out that Will knew his plan, not so soon. Not until he had to say it out loud. But the slight quirk of Dr. Lecter’s eyebrow says he understood perfectly.

“Of being a therapist?” he asks.

“That too,” Will says. His eyes flick over to Jack for a brief moment, then back to his coffee.

“Not fond of eye contact, are you?” Dr. Lecter asks.

Will raises his eyebrows and laughs. “No. Like every other Echo on the planet, I don’t like looking too far into people.”

“But that’s not all,” Dr. Lecter says.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” he says, with that infuriating calm, “you’re the most stable Echo ever to leave the Chambers. The usual restrictions of your kind don’t apply to the same extent.”

“My _kind?_ ” Will repeats. He’s aware that this is quickly turning into a confrontation of the kind he generally tries to avoid. He’s aware that Jack is looking for a moment to step in. But he doesn’t care. “And your kind, what about them?”

Dr. Lecter actually smiles. “The limitations of my kind are not nearly so easily observed,” he says. He doesn’t even try to deny it, doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Will means. It’s disarming, and it brings him up short more effectively than any amount of protestation could have done.

He doesn’t know what happens after he leaves. He doesn’t know that Jack chides Dr. Lecter, or that Dr. Lecter actually praises his ability and chides Jack right back for pushing Will so hard. He only knows that without his ever agreeing to it, he’s suddenly a patient of Dr. Lecter, and no matter how many times Dr. Lecter and Alana reassure him he will never believe that this isn’t solely about giving the unstable Echo a Grounder.

The next crime scene is worse. They always get worse. Even if nothing was done to set this one apart, the mere fact of seeing a second body within a week would have been enough to unsettle him. And there was plenty to set this one apart.

“He wanted her found this way,” Will says. Around him, the cops are surprised to hear him speak. Even Jack looks surprised; Will usually goes into a trance before he gives this kind of insight. But he’s not going into a trance today. He doesn’t need to.

There’s a sense to the scars on this woman that he’s felt before. He knows the “scent” of whoever did this, but he hasn’t met them enough or read them enough to recognize the scent when he finds it again. And while Will’s memory is brilliant and his abilities as an Echo unparalleled, his ability to match “scent” to “scent” is limited.

Hannibal comes to see him the next day, bearing breakfast. Will is vaguely unsettled by this, but the scars on the food are no more than normal for this amount of meat. If anything, they’re lesser, and he finds himself impressed with Hannibal’s apparent commitment to eating humanely raised meat.

For someone who was raised on poorly-disguised cafeteria food and spends most nights eating frozen meals or takeout, this food is heavenly. He can’t remember anything tasting so good, and he suspects that Dr. Lecter will permanently ruin him for cheap food if he makes a habit of this.

“I would apologize for my analytical ambush,” Dr. Lecter says as Will takes more of the food from the container, “but I suspect I would be apologizing again soon and you would tire of that eventually so I must consider using apologies sparingly.”

“Just keep it professional,” Will says. For once his reasons for not making eye contact are exactly what he said they were—he has no interest in looking into the soul of a Grounder.

“Or we could socialize like adults,” Dr. Lecter suggests.

Will sets down his coffee without taking a drink. “You’re a Grounder,” he says. “I’m an Echo. I know why Jack picked you as my ‘therapist’. He wants me to get a Grounder, and you come with a psych degree. Two birds and all that. But let me get one thing clear—I don’t want a Grounder. I never have.”

“And you’ve dealt very well with your abnormally strong abilities on your own,” Dr. Lecter agrees. “But your friends are worried about you.”

“Jack’s my guardian, not my friend.”

“And Ms. Bloom?”

Will doesn’t have an answer to that.

“Let me be clear,” Dr. Lecter continues, slicing a neat piece of sausage and spearing it with his fork. “I have no intention of forcing Grounding on you. So long as you ask, I will be your therapist and nothing more. But should you ever decide you need a Grounder—I am prepared to be that as well.”

Talk turns to the Shrike and the problems they both profess not to have, and then inevitably to Jack. “I think,” Dr. Lecter says, “Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup. Fine china used for only special guests.”

“How do you see me?” Will asks.

He’s making eye contact when Dr. Lecter answers. So he gets a glimpse of how deep the comparison goes before he looks away.

Will takes Dr. Lecter to the crime scene with him. It’s to both their benefit, he thinks. “Why are you smiling?” Will asks.

“Peeking behind the curtain,” Dr. Lecter replies. “I’ve never seen someone like you in action.”

“You mean an Echo,” Will says flatly.

“I mean an Echo who’s risen above that status.” Somehow, when Dr. Lecter corrects him like that, Will can almost believe it, more than he can when Alana does it.

Files and facts are harder to get a read on than pictures, but Will manages. He’s the most skilled Echo outside of the Chambers for a reason, after all.

“Garret Jacob Hobbs?” he asks.

The woman doesn’t know anything about Hobbs. She _doesn’t keep company with these people,_ these people being the plumbers, the people who work for her. It enrages him for reasons he can’t quite pin down.

He doesn’t know that Hannibal calls Hobbs while he’s picking up the papers and transferring the files to the car. He doesn’t know that—but he knows when he comes back that something has _happened._ Something is very wrong, and not with Hobbs—with Dr. Lecter.

But he still can’t pin down what it is, so in the end he dismisses it and gets back in the car to finish this.

He knows, when he sees the house, that this is the right place. His instinct, his sense, was right. If he had any doubt, it’s confirmed when Hobbs drops his wife, her throat cut, onto the porch.

Hobbs is holding his daughter, and Will was right—she’s the golden ticket. But he can’t stop. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t think, just shoots. He empties the clip into the man who just slashed his wife and daughter’s throat. He can’t make out the man’s last words, can’t keep his hands steady enough to save his daughter.

Dr. Lecter can, though. Dr. Lecter wraps his hand around Abigail’s throat, applying pressure to stop the bleeding without cutting off her air. And now, for the first time, Will thinks he could learn to trust Dr. Lecter.

Far more than he trusts Jack, anyway.

He doesn’t know that Jack tries to find him only to find Alana guest lecturing in his place. He doesn’t know that Alana cuts Jack down with a single sentence. He doesn’t know, because he’s at the hospital visiting Abigail Hobbs.

And Dr. Lecter is there. Sleeping, hand wrapped around the patient’s.

And there is so much wrong about this picture that Will can’t wrap his head around it all—there’s so much going on that he still doesn’t know—but there’s a sense of rightness here, too.

One day, that hand will be on his. One day, he thinks. One day he’ll accept Dr. Lecter’s offer to be his Grounder, not just his therapist.


	2. Eldon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Echo-verse goes through the events of episode two... more or less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After this, we're going to take a quick detour away from canon. By "quick detour" I mean we will never return fully to canon.

Parents don’t really look for signs that their child is an Echo unless they want an excuse to be rid of them, because nine out of ten Echoes never leave the Chambers and the remaining one almost always goes back eventually. No, the ones who look for the signs are the teachers. Teachers’ pay is absolute crap, and aside from the pay they’ll get if they find an Echo or Grounder in their classroom, there’s too much that can go wrong in their job—far more than can go wrong for a parent.

So they keep their eyes out, and stop things like untrained Grounders accidentally claiming their Echo peers. That’s how Will was found.

Days like this he wishes he’d never met Elizabeth. As sweet as she was, she was the reason their teacher figured out he was an Echo and she was a Grounder. If it hadn’t been for her, Will would never have gone to the Chambers. And if he hadn’t gone to the Chambers, he wouldn’t now be looking at a room full of antlers that a psychopath had mounted his kills on.

Jack makes no secret of his suspicion—no, his _conviction_ that Abigail Hobbs helped her father murder the other girls. Will tries not to snap at him. He’s worn down. He never knew the scars that came from being on the other end of the gun. He’s seen murder scenes, seen the victims staring blankly out at the world that abandoned them in the cruelest way possible. But he’s never pulled the trigger before. He’s never heard the psychic screams from no further away than a small kitchen. He’s never seen the scars cover a girl after her father cuts her throat. He’s never heard the screams that she may never voice again.

There’s a scar below the antlers that Will can just put his finger on. Someone else left a trace of themselves here. He finds the hair and it strikes a familiar cord, but it’s been too long. He can’t pinpoint where it came from.

Work horrifies him. He hasn’t even gone into the room when he knows that things are wrong. People in that room—they see him as a hero. They can’t hear the way Abigail’s screams have sunk into his own soul. He almost walks away, but he doesn’t.

He regrets that decision.

Alana is nice as always. She warns him that Jack is coming. She asks if he’s ready to go back to the field. Alana—she’s the only one who’s treated him like that since Elizabeth. As much as he knows she wants to evaluate and study him, she doesn’t. And that means more to him than if she didn’t want to at all, somehow.

Jack, though—Jack informs Alana that _he_ wants Will back in the field, and the thing is, he’s Will’s guardian. He has the right, should he choose to exercise it, to force Will back into the field. Just like he has the right to force Will to take a Grounder or go back to the Chamber.

Will is a little surprised he doesn’t do either of those things. Instead he tells Will that Dr. Lecter’s going to give him a psych eval.

Even more surprising is that the psych eval is for real, not just a formality. Will knows he needs the therapy—that is, if there was any chance of it working—but he didn’t expect Jack to admit to it.

Jack says it’s so he can get some sleep at night. Will knows better. That sentence shows more concern for Will than anything Jack has professed to directly. Because Jack, like so many other alpha males, only manages to be heartfelt when he’s lying.

Will has avoided Grounders since getting out of the Chamber. This is the first time he’s had more than one encounter with one, and Dr. Lecter hasn’t gotten any easier to read. Will thinks maybe that’s part of the Grounding ability at work. If he can’t read Dr. Lecter, then he’s like the one quiet room in an infinitely loud mansion where everyone else is throwing a party.

Maybe that’s why Hannibal can surprise Will so easily. Rubber-stamping him would be a good way to lose his trust for anyone else, but Dr. Lecter earns it back with one sentence.

They talk about Abigail. They talk about how they both feel obligated to keep Abigail safe. And Will, against all his intellectual knowledge, _believes_ Dr. Lecter when he says he feels obligated. He doesn’t believe many people—trust is something people have to earn from him—but he believes Dr. Lecter.

And then, once again Hannibal surprises him. “The mirrors in your mind can reflect the best of yourself,” he tells Will, “not the worst of someone else.”

“A lot of people would say there isn’t any ‘me’ to reflect the best of,” Will says dryly.

“A lot of people would be wrong,” Hannibal replies. His voice is soft, hard with conviction. Will almost believes it. He’d like to believe it—but he can’t. And most of all he can’t believe that Dr. Lecter believes it.

Beverly finds him in the shooting range. He doesn’t want to see her. He blames her, even though it’s not her fault that he’s fallen so far. He’s been jolted out of trances before. She didn’t know. His status as an Echo isn’t exactly publicized. Reintegrated Echoes don’t have the same pressure to be open that pre-integration Echoes do. It’s not Beverly’s fault that this particular trance didn’t fully break, he reminds himself.

And for a few moments he starts to forgive her, starts to like her. She understands now, better than her colleagues do. She knows what’s appropriate and what’s not in terms of his humor. And he stars to relax as they talk about gun stance and Newton’s cradles.

And then she touches him. He knows she’s just trying to adjust his stance but it doesn’t matter—he jerks away from her so fast he collides with the wall of the lane.

“Sorry,” she says. She puts up her hands in the universal sign for ‘not dangerous’. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Will doesn’t look at her. It’s embarrassing, because it’s not her fault and he doesn’t want to explain and because Hannibal made a mistake signing off on those papers saying he was fit for field work. “No, I’m—it’s fine,” he manages. “Just—warn me, is all.”

“Right.” Beverly offers him a small smile and gestures toward him. “May I?”

He nods, but he watches her over his shoulder as he turns back to the target. Gently, warning him each time, Beverly takes his arms and adjusts his stance. “See if that helps with the recoil,” she says.

He fires again. “That’s better,” he says when he sees the target. “You come all the way down here to teach me how to shoot?” he asks, because he knows she didn’t.

“No,” she confirms. “Jack sent me down her to find out what you know about gardening.”

This time, the sick feeling in his stomach has nothing to do with his weird skills and everything to do with the knowledge that something horrific lies behind that question and he doesn’t want to see it.

He falls into the trance easily this time. This time, everyone stays back from the scene while he works.

He doesn’t know—his vision is far too tunneled—that behind him Freddie Lounds is conning a police officer into giving up protected information. He doesn’t look behind him and see a face that he knew a long time ago. He doesn’t notice the eyes of an old friend boring into his back, or sense the whispers in her mind as she recognizes him.

What he does know is that this trance carries a taint of an old one. And he knows when he comes out of the trance that there’s someone else there. He can’t be sure, but he thinks it’s the owner of the hair he found in the cabin.

He doesn’t have an appointment with Dr. Lecter for another few days, but he goes and he catches the man when he doesn’t have an appointment anyway. They talk. Will notices and is relieved that Dr. Lecter stays a safe distance away from him. Will doesn’t want Grounding. He’s all but praying Jack doesn’t force it on him, or Dr. Lecter. The man has his ethics, but Will is sure he could manage to claim Will against his will (pun unintended) if he wanted to. But Will doesn’t want it. He’ll fix this—this leak in his brain that keeps letting in a man he already killed and buried. And then he’ll go back to being who he is—the first and so far only Echo ever to remain functional fifteen years after leaving the Chambers. He knows it’s much harder to go back to being self-sufficient once you’ve had a Grounder.

Dr. Lecter doesn’t force it on him, either. Will tells himself he’s glad about that.

He doesn’t see that as soon as he’s gone Dr. Lecter lets Freddie Lounds into his office. He doesn’t hear the name she’s used to book the appointment, “Kimball.” Once more he has the sense of that person who left her hair in the cabin, but he knows Dr. Lecter won’t break doctor-patient confidentiality to let him see who it is. So he still doesn’t learn who she is, but the nagging familiarity is still there and starting to bother him. Why can’t he remember who this is?

There’s a strange feeling to the other workers when Will starts drinking coffee in the morgue. There are weird looks and open denials when he says that the victims are all diabetic. Let them stare, he thinks. Let them wonder how he did that. Let them, if they can, figure out who Will is.

He doesn’t admit to himself that he wants them to figure it out. He doesn’t admit that part of him wants someone to force him to Ground, because then he wouldn’t feel weak about it and he would (hopefully) have his head back on straight. He doesn’t admit it, because it _isn’t true._

He tells himself that while the agents investigate and confirm that the victims are diabetic. He tells himself the same thing while he waits for Jack to come up with a suspect. He repeats it all the way to the pharmacy, and by then the adrenaline is flooding and he’s the most clearheaded he’s been in weeks. He’s clearheaded enough to find her by her screams, and when the cop comes to see Jack he’s actually feeling almost calm.

And then Beverly reads the article by Freddie Lounds.

He wonders—if she watched him so long, how did she not figure it out? If she listened in on his session with Dr. Lecter—and she had to, there are too many details she couldn’t have gotten anywhere else—how did she not realize he’s not just a profiler but an Echo?

The simple truth is that she should have figured it out. And the question why she didn’t say anything keeps nagging at him.

They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Will knows that’s a load of crap. He knows a lot of things other people don’t, and he knows they hurt people every day. He knows. And he knows that if he doesn’t solve the mystery of Freddie Lounds soon, it will hurt him very badly.

He falls asleep in the hospital, on the couch in Abigail Hobbs’ room. He dreams of a stag, and wakes to find Alana there, reading to Abigail.

When she realizes he’s awake, she smiles at him. He asks her to keep reading, and she obliges. But after not long enough she turns to him.

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

He knows what she’s asking. “Fine,” he lies.

She smiles again, just a bit. “No, you’re not. You wouldn’t be sleeping in here if you were fine. You’d be out hunting this guy so you could sleep better at night.”

Sometimes he hates how well she knows him. She’s not an Echo, not a Grounder. How is it that she can read him better than he can read so many people? Better than he can read Dr. Lecter, or this killer Eldon.

And in the blink of an eye, he understands. The only people he can’t read have been Elizabeth and Dr. Lecter. The only Grounders he’s ever met.

And now Eldon.

The only Grounder who’s ever sought to meet him.

He knows what Eldon is after. He understands, in the kind of insight that only the perceptive ability of an Echo combined with years of FBI training can give him, that Eldon is a Grounder. And he knows what the limitations of Grounders are.

He doesn’t know that Eldon is unknowingly headed for a meeting with another Echo, or that he is about to terrorize that Echo into telling him everything about him. He doesn’t even realize the person Eldon is headed for is an Echo.

It’s not until Jack calls him on his way back to Abigail that he knows what’s happened. And he finally realizes what they failed to mention at the Chambers. Grounders are the opposite of Echoes; that’s why Echoes are trained to rely on them and it’s why they can’t read them.

It’s not a trance he goes into now. It’s an adrenaline-fueled rage. Somewhere, somehow, between Hannibal’s comments and his own beliefs, he started to feel responsible for Abigail Hobbs. And now—now he will not let her die.

He barely registers the gunshot. He can hear Abigail’s screams—her mind doesn’t recognize the danger she’s in but her soul, whatever a soul is, does. That collection of bruises and scars that make up her life knows it’s in danger of ending and it screams, and Will puts his hand on hers and walks with her as the orderlies take her back to her room, and he tries to make the screaming stop.

He’s still there, sitting beside Abigail and holding her hand, when Alana comes in.

Alana sits across the bed from him. “You need to Ground,” she says.

He hates her for saying it. He doesn’t _need_ to Ground. He doesn’t _need_ anything. He accepts therapy, but that’s not Grounding. He doesn’t want Grounding.

He’s aware his mind is trapped in a loop, that there’s no argument or any real reasoning going on but just an endless repeat of _do not want._ But that’s all he should need. Why should he be forced to let one more person into his head? He already spends so much of his life letting everyone he passes in. People who he’s never met get real estate in his head, he has no interest in giving any of it over to a Grounder.

“Will. Will, listen to me.”

“I hear you,” Will snaps.

“That’s not what I said. Will, you’ve been having nightmares. And right now you’re trapped so far in someone else’s scars that you can’t listen to me.”

It’s not true. They’re his scars.

He jumps to his feet when he realizes he just had that thought. This is why Echoes never last outside the Chambers. In an unprotected environment, the scars of everyone else overwhelm an Echo until they can’t tell who they are.

Alana says something else, but he doesn’t hear it. He nearly runs out of the room. He’s going to go to Dr. Lecter. And they’re going to talk. And he’ll be _fine._

Midway down the hall, he sees a familiar face out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t stop to look closer and see who it is. So once more, he and Freddie Lounds pass like two ships in the night, and he doesn’t realize who the tabloid journalist is.

Instead, he gets in his car and drives to Hannibal’s office without stopping. He knows when he enters the waiting room that there’s someone in an appointment already, but he doesn’t leave. Instead he paces nervously, waiting for that appointment to be over because he knows that next is an empty slot. Or rather, he believes that Dr. Lecter will make his other appointments go away, because they are an Echo and a Grounder and he needs Dr. Lecter more than those other patients.

He’s right on both points, but he doesn’t have to test the second.

Dr. Lecter opens the door as soon as the other patient leaves. “We don’t have a session scheduled,” he points out in that calm, accented tone.

“I know,” Will says. He doesn’t look at Dr. Lecter’s eyes. “I need—” To talk, he wants to say. To Ground, he needs to say.

Dr. Lecter understands what he is and isn’t saying. He stands back and gestures to the room. “Come in, Will. We’ll figure it out.”

Will nods. Dr. Lecter takes a seat across from Will, well out of arm’s reach. If Will wants to Ground he’s going to have to ask for it. But he doesn’t want to.

“I suspect you know that there is an easy way to do this,” Dr. Lecter says. “I also suspect you’re not going to take it.”

Will takes a long, shuddering breath. He doesn’t want this. He needs this. He doesn’t want it. He’s not sure which option he’s thinking about anymore. “The… the limitations of your kind,” he says. “You mentioned them before. What are they?”

His gaze is on his hands. He almost expects Dr. Lecter to refuse to answer. Instead he explains, still in that calm tone. “Grounders can’t develop emotional connections. We do not feel emotion, not the way that a normal person would. Certainly not with the intensity of an Echo. Only when we Ground someone, when we take in those unwanted memories of horrible scars, do we truly feel.”

“And does that mean…” Will stops. Takes a breath. Tries again. “Does that matter to you? Do you _want_ to feel?”

Dr. Lecter considers. That’s good; Will wouldn’t have believed him if he’d answered immediately. “It’s difficult to want something with any level of intensity when the very act of wanting requires a level of emotion that I can’t reach,” he says at last. “Yet the lack of truly wanting or feeling is itself painful. So yes, I do want to feel.”

Will doesn’t say anything. He looks at his hands, clasped between his knees.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Dr. Lecter says. “I’ve made the offer. You know the advantages and disadvantages. You can wait. In this case, as in many others, you can change no to yes—but you can’t change yes to no.”

“Yes,” Will says.

Dr. Lecter frowns. “Yes to what?”

Will looks up. He extends a hand. “Yes,” he says more clearly. “I want—to Ground.”

Dr. Lecter doesn’t smile. He looks very serious. “You’re an Echo, Will,” he says. “You can’t change your mind. You won’t be able to choose another Grounder later.”

“I know,” Will says. He’s impatient. Scars and screams have built up around him and he can barely think.

Dr. Lecter stands and walks over to Will—but he doesn’t take Will’s hand. Instead he places his hand on Will’s clothed wrist and pushes it back down onto his knee. “You have time,” he repeats. “I’m going to sign a doctor’s order—you’re not to work any cases for the next two weeks. For that time, you’ll have daily sessions with me, and we’ll try to get you back into the field. If we can’t manage that in two weeks, then yes. I will Ground you. I will claim you.”

“You said you were willing.” It comes out as an accusation.

“I am,” Dr. Lecter replies. “But only when you are. I won’t force you, Will.”

He sits back down, pulls a pad and pen to him, and writes a note to Jack. “Now,” he says when he’s finished it. “Tell me what happened.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three is written, and failing my laptop and AO3 going through some kind of critical failure between now and then, it will be posted one week from today (so Saturday, June 15. It's still the 8th here, it's not my fault AO3 is on a weird time zone).


	3. Two Weeks' Notice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal promised, so now Will just has to last the next two weeks.

_Day 1_

Hannibal is not a nice man. He isn’t waiting, forcing Will to try therapy before Grounding, out of some sense of responsibility or compassion. Rather, he is waiting until Will is nearly broken. When he is both Will’s therapist and the only person in his life who he can’t effectively read, it’s easy enough to push him to that point.

He’s waited years for a chance like this, after all. He can wait two more weeks.

He pushes Will to involve himself in normal life. Jack was annoyed with the doctor’s orders, but he can’t really argue them, not when he wants to project his image as a good and responsible guardian for Will. Jack and Hannibal know what Will is too modest to realize: Any number of others would jump at the chance to be Will’s guardian. Will is unique among a group of people who are already extraordinary. Should Jack ever prove incapable, he will be quickly replaced. So at Hannibal’s orders, Will is not to work any cases, or teach any classes, until two weeks from today.

Instead Will goes to see his old teacher. His last teacher, more accurately. The one who discovered him as an Echo and reported him. By coincidence, today is her retirement party.

The room goes quiet when he comes in. He wonders why—he doesn’t look the same as the kid she reported as an Echo—but he figures it’s just because he wasn’t invited and isn’t dressed in nice clothes like everyone else.

Mrs. Carrol—she was Miss Lewis when he was in her kindergarten class, but she got married a few years after he went to the Chambers—is in the middle of all of it. She looks older than other retirees he’s seen, worn down and stretched thin. She recognizes him—he doesn’t know how—and asks him to walk with her. He does.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing she says.

Will looks over at her, confused. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

She raises an eyebrow and gives him a sardonic smile. “That’s not why you came, to tell me off? You know I did it for the money, and to make my own job easier. That doesn’t bother you?”

He has to think about that. “It did at first,” he says. “But—if it hadn’t been you, someone else would have turned me in eventually. And it was scary, before. I thought I was losing my mind, and no one ever leaves the Chambers forever, not until now. But I’m—I forgave you a long time ago.”

He says it because she needs to hear it, but it’s true. He doesn’t blame her for a thing.

“So what’s he like?” he asks, nodding to her left hand and the wedding ring on her finger.

“You’re not going to just read it?” she teases him.

He shakes his head. “I know he’s a good man and you love him,” he says. “But I don’t know why you still seem so tired.”

She thinks about that. Apparently that’s another thing she didn’t think he’d say. “I could feed you the bullshit I’ve given everyone else for the past several years,” she says. “I could tell you that anyone who’s taught kindergarteners for over thirty years would look like me. But the truth is?” She sighs. “I’ve just—I feel so guilty. Ever since your reintegration ceremony—I was there, but I left without saying anything to you. I didn’t want to know if you blamed me, and I wasn’t ready to apologize.”

Will nods. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not yours either.”

They talk for a while longer, about what Mrs. Carrol plans to do with her retirement, about how Mr. Carrol is and how their kids are (they have two, both daughters; one is a rare Grounder, which Mr. Carrol was happier about than Mrs. Carrol) and how Will’s job is (he doesn’t tell her about Hannibal or his desire to Ground). In the end, they part friends.

_Day 2_

Will is headed to his daily appointment with Dr. Lecter when he sees a nearly-forgotten face leaving the building.

“Frankie!” he calls.

The Echo—rounder and hairier than Will remembers, but still with the innocent childlike face he always had—looks over at Will. He smiles, then frowns, and jogs over.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you got a Grounder.”

It hits Will, the certainty. “You’re seeing Dr. Lecter as a Grounder?”

Franklin shoves his hands in his pockets and shakes his head, looking a little forlorn. “He won’t be my Grounder. I’m just his patient.” His look turns a little conspiratorial and a little teasing. “Did he turn me down because he’s already got you as an Echo?”

Will shakes his head. “I don’t have a Grounder,” he reminds Franklin. “I never have. But what about you? Last I heard, you’d been recalled.”

“Yeah, I applied for a second chance,” Franklin says. “Did you know—Kate never made it back to the Chambers when she was recalled. She’s been AWOL for years.”

Will can’t find the words to reply to that. Kate Kimball had been the third Echo released for prospective reintegration with him and Franklin. Franklin had lasted only two years or so on the outside; Kate had made it to within a month of official reintegration before being recalled.

“So that’s why she wasn’t at the ceremony,” Will says. “I thought she was bitter.”

Franklin shakes his head. “No, man. We all said we’d be at the ceremony if any of us were reintegrated.” His face brightens, and Will almost smiles. Same old Frankie. “Hey, I almost forgot to tell you—I’m four years out! Twice as far as I made it last time!”

“Yeah, well, just make it this time, okay?” Will is teasing, mostly, as he shoves Franklin’s shoulder like he did when they were kids in the Chamber. “I’m tired of being the only reintegrated Echo on the East Coast.”

Franklin nods, much more serious than Will is. “Oh, I plan to. I’ve got the therapy, I’ve got a good solid home life, I’m training for a job in customer service, my guardian’s awesome—just you wait, six years from now you’ll be at _my_ reintegration ceremony.”

Will smiles for real now. “I’ll hold you to that,” he says, and waves goodbye before heading in to his own appointment.

“Hey, I’ll see you around, maybe!” Franklin calls.

“Sure thing!” Will says without conviction.

_Day 3_

“Will,” Alana says when she sees him in the doorway of the lecture hall behind her. “I thought you were supposed to be on leave for two weeks.”

“Enforced medical leave, specifically,” he says dryly. “But I’m not here to work, I wanted to talk to you. Do you—want to have lunch with me?”

Alana considers. “Sure,” she says.

They have lunch at a café outside, and Will is surprised by how quiet everything seems to his Echo senses. Maybe Dr. Lecter was right, and he just needed some time off.

He confesses to Alana that he asked Dr. Lecter to Ground him. She seems more concerned than he is that Dr. Lecter told him to wait two weeks. “You’re sure this will be okay?” she asks him.

“No,” he admits, spearing a piece of lettuce with his fork. “But I hope it will. Dr. Lecter thinks it’ll work out, and if it doesn’t he’s agreed to be my Grounder at the end of the two weeks.”

Alana still seems concerned. Will makes the mistake of looking into her eyes and finds himself falling into a trance, surrounded by all her scars and all her screams, until he forces his eyes back down just in time.

“You’re losing control, aren’t you?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he insists.

“Will, you asked Dr. Lecter to ground you. That rules out ‘fine’ already.” She covers his hand with hers, without warning, and he nearly jumps out of his chair. “Promise me, if things aren’t better at the end of this, you’ll let him be your Grounder.”

He stares at her hand, because his instincts are still screaming that it’s a threat and only by looking at it can he quiet them. “I promise,” he says.

Alana seems satisfied with that.

_Day 4_

He didn’t tell Dr. Lecter about seeing Frankie the day it happened. Dr. Lecter knew something was wrong, he was sure of it; but he let it lie until Will was willing to talk about it. Today, he’s more than willing. He starts talking and the words just come pouring out. He’s tired of being the only reintegrated Echo. But he knows Frankie. Frankie doesn’t know how to keep a promise. Frankie doesn’t know how to gauge his own limitations. He’s going to burn out—Echoes’ abilities might make them suited for customer-oriented jobs, but Frankie’s temperament makes such a job a poor fit for him.

Dr. Lecter listens patiently, asking questions when Will pauses for longer than a breath. And by the end, Will had convinced himself that Frankie will never make it. He almost asks Dr. Lecter to reconsider being Frankie’s Grounder, but he doesn’t. He knows Frankie. He makes every relationship bigger than it should be, more important, until the other person is overwhelmed. Tying anyone to Frankie as a Grounder, when each Echo can only ever have one, would be cruel to that Grounder—and to Frankie, when he realized the match was wrong.

Hannibal has no problem letting Will reach this conclusion. Dear William needs someone to rely on, and as a highly prized Echo his choices are limited. He doesn’t trust his guardian; he doesn’t trust the only other Echo around. He’ll have to pick a Grounder.

_Day 5_

Jack tries to get Will in to the office today. Will doesn’t know this; he shows up at Dr. Lecter’s office while Will is in his daily session. Dr. Lecter keeps things quiet and civil and politely but firmly sends Jack away. He tells Will it was a patient who got the time of his appointment wrong.

Will hasn’t seen Jack this entire week. Of course, he’s legally reintegrated; Jack being his guardian is more a formality than a reality at this stage. But by now it’s starting to get to him. He’s starting to think that Jack is disappointed in him, that he’s cutting him out. Preparing to send him back to the Chamber, if things don’t sort themselves out.

_Day 6_

Will confesses to Dr. Lecter that the nightmares are still there. The hallucinations have tapered off, but he still has the sense that that trance over Elise Nichols’ body never stopped.

Dr. Lecter suggests he keep a dream journal. Will laughs aloud at the suggestion.

_Day 7_

He wakes up in the middle of a road ten miles from his house. Police drive him home.

Again he asks Dr. Lecter to Ground him. Forget the two-week deal, he says. He needs this to stop.

Dr. Lecter refuses.

“You can’t choose another Grounder later, Will,” he says. “If you and I should ever have a falling out, only one of us would have the choice to walk away from it. You need to be sure before you do this.”

“I am sure,” Will insists.

“You’ve been sure for a week,” Dr. Lecter replies. “You were sure you never wanted a Grounder for nearly thirty years prior. I don’t doubt you’re sure—but I do doubt that you will be sure another week from now.”

He leans back in his chair. “However, I might suggest wearing your Echo ID bracelet again. You do still have it, correct?”

Will frowns. “Yes, but—why?”

“So that should you be found sleepwalking again, whoever finds you will know how to deal with it.”

_Day 8_

Will still goes to see Abigail in the hospital every day. Today, though, he catches a glimpse on the way in of a familiar face, a familiar presence, out of the corner of his eye. It’s the presence he chased from Hobbs’ cabin. And now, thanks to his conversation with Frankie nearly a week ago, he can identify the sense.

“Frankie said you went AWOL,” he says to the red-haired woman lying beside Eldon. Like Abigail, he’s in a coma. His, however, was probably induced to keep him from running while they sorted out what to do with a rogue Grounder.

“Frankie was right,” says the woman he once knew as Kate Kimball. She offers him a slim smile. “Hi, Will.”

“Hey,” he says. That’s all he says. He keeps his eyes on Eldon, because his are closed and his screams are muffled by his Grounder abilities. “So what is it now—Freddie? Freddie Lounds?”

Kate doesn’t look apologetic in the least. “Yes,” she says.

He shakes his head. “Why did you post those articles about me?” he asks. “Why would you sabotage me like that?”

“Because I want you to run, with me,” Kate says. “Not stay here, surrounded by people who want to use you.”

“You didn’t out me as an Echo,” he says. “Why not?”

“I don’t want you as an enemy.” She smiles a little ruefully. “But it doesn’t matter now. I’m done writing about you, and not because your owner threatened me.”

He doesn’t have the energy to get properly offended at her calling Jack his owner. It’s a common derogatory term among Echoes in the Chambers.  None of them want a guardian, even the ones who want to get out. The fact that they have to have a guardian even if they achieve legal reintegration chafes them. ‘Keeper’ is another term they use a lot, and Echoes within the Chambers are known to call the ones on the outside ‘dogs’. Will has yet to meet a non-Echo who uses the terms.

“Why are you in here?” he asks.

She sighs and leans forward, bracing her elbows on her knees and clasping her hands together. “He claimed me,” she says, nodding to the man in the bed. “By force.”

Will looks over at him. “How?”

“Desperation,” she says. “That’s all I can figure. But he did it.” She pulls down the high collar of her jacket and he can see the hand-shaped burn marks on her neck. “But since I was AWOL,” she continues, fixing her collar, “and supposed to be in the Chambers, they’re trying to figure out if the usual protections apply to him.”

She glances at his wrist, and he follows her gaze to see that his ID bracelet has slipped into view. He covers it with his other hand and leaves to see Abigail, not stopping to say goodbye.

_Day 9_

As embarrassing as it is to be wearing the ID bracelet anymore, Will keeps it on, and it comes in handy that night when he sleepwalks again—or rather, sleep _drives_. This time, Jack is called, as his guardian. He tells them to call Dr. Lecter as well, and both men arrive at about the same time.

Will gathers from the interview with the police—both sides of it—that he got in his car and drove for Dr. Lecter’s house. He should be embarrassed by that, but he doesn’t have the energy. There have been times in the past nine days where he’s thought he was getting better and everything was going to be fine. But those times—they seem utterly insignificant now, when he’s falling deeper and deeper into a pit he won’t be able to get out of on his own.

_Day 10_

He doesn’t sleep at all the next night. He mainlines coffee and watches late-night TV to keep himself awake. Two of his many dogs curl up with him. Both of them fall asleep on top of him, and despite the heat and the softness of their fur he refuses to relax.

Dr. Lecter is disappointed in him. “Not sleeping isn’t going to make anything better, Will,” he chides him. “Sleeplessness takes a toll on the headblind, and your mind is a much more delicate instrument.”

Will doesn’t answer.

_Day 11_

“Why don’t you feel anything?” Will asks Dr. Lecter.

Dr. Lecter considers the question. “I suppose it’s because an Echo is in essence an overabundance of feeling,” he answers at last. “Nature abhors giving all power to one party, so she made Echoes and Grounders symbiotic in nature.”

“But Grounders can work with as many Echoes as they want,” Will objects.

“And Echoes are more likely to tip off the edge, and Grounders less common.” Dr. Lecter’s voice is soothing. “And Grounders are very good at survival.”

“Know what I think?”

Dr. Lecter smiles. “Very rarely.”

Will, for once, meets his eyes. “I think that Echoes aren’t supposed to have Grounders. That’s why the relationship is so weighted in your favor—to deter us from accepting it at all.”

_Day 12_

It occurs to him, two days before his two-week trial period is up, that he hasn’t seen Jack except for the time he showed up after Will was found sleepwalking.

Part of him thinks that Jack is trying to stay away so that Will will recover faster. Part of him thinks Jack is through with him. And part of him needs to hear Jack answer for this, so he goes to see him. He knows where his guardian’s house is, and Bella welcomes him. She and Jack never had children; in some ways he knows she sees him as the substitute for that.

He stays for dinner, and Jack explains he’s been on a new case. Per Dr. Lecter’s orders, he didn’t bring Will into it; but he’s been working late.

By pure chance, the fact that Jack tried to get Will on this case is never mentioned, and maybe that’s for the best, because between Jack’s respect for Will’s health and Bella’s continued motherly affection for him, Will leaves more confident that Jack wants him to recover.

_Day 13_

There are protections for Echoes encoded into the same laws that restrict them. Many of those protections revolve around Grounders. A Grounder’s life, legally speaking, is worth not only their own but that of every Echo they’ve claimed.

Hannibal Lecter has never claimed an Echo. He doesn’t want just anyone to have that kind of access to his head, regardless of what it might get him. Pure curiosity is the only reason he considered claiming an Echo, until Will Graham came into his life. But Will—Will is _perfect._ Hannibal has no problem claiming Will. He just wants to be sure Will won’t betray him when he does.

_Day 14_

Will tries not to show his impatience. “It’s been two weeks,” he reminds Hannibal. “Two weeks of sleepwalking, and flashbacks, and involuntary trances—you promised if it wasn’t better in two weeks you’d be my Grounder.”

Dr. Lecter nods. “I did. And I would never go back on my word.” He smiles, and stands, holding out his hand. Will will have to be the one to join their hands.

He stands, and slips his hand into Dr. Lecter’s. It takes a moment for him to break down the barriers in his mind, and Hannibal to break down his own. Grounders and Echoes alike tend to have strong mental defenses against involuntary claiming; breaking those without warning is what causes burns like Kate’s.

After a moment, the Grounding begins. Will closes his eyes in relief as pain and scars and screams leave his psyche. He doesn’t have to hold on to them anymore. They’re eaten up by the psychic void of his Grounder.

But something else is returned—not just his Grounder’s calm, but images. Knowledge. Will knew that this was part of Grounding; mental stability comes not just from the siphoning off of scars but the injection of calm emotionlessness into his mind. But these images, this knowledge—

He drops his hand, ending the Grounding prematurely. He stares at Dr. Lecter. “You—you’re—”

Dr. Lecter—Hannibal—catches him as he faints.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all are awesome readers. I'm getting a lot of good questions and comments about the structure of this world, and I don't want to spoil things I do plan to explore later, but I'll just say that if you think something about this world is nonsensical or poorly constructed, you're probably right.

**Author's Note:**

> Handy definitions:
> 
> Echo: Psychics. Echoes are bound by a multitude of laws that among other things require them to always have a legal guardian, ideally their Grounder. Echoes can only have one Grounder in their lives.  
> Grounder: Sort of a reverse-psychic, they take in the spillover of what an Echo receives and replace it with a sense of calm. Grounders can work with as many Echoes as they choose.  
> Headblind: Neither an Echo nor a Grounder.  
> Chambers: Facilities where young Echoes are raised before reintegration is attempted and after it fails.  
> Reintegration: The Integration Initiative gives Echoes a chance to leave the Chambers and rejoin the world at large. An Echo must remain functional for ten years on the outside of the Chambers in order to be declared reintegrated.  
> Echo ID bracelet: Looks like a med-alert bracelet, but the band is red paracord (if the Echo doesn't have a Grounder) or blue (if they do). Grounders also have ID bracelets in green, but are not required to wear them. Echoes are required to wear their bracelets until they are legally declared reintegrated.


End file.
